“If the only world event worth commenting on is the most severe tragedy, then where does the pissing contest end? Yes, what happened in Norway was terrible, but what about what happened in Japan? What about what happened with the Asian tsunami? What about 9/11 here in the good ol’ US of A? (You said you’d never forget!) What about everything bad that has ever happened?” [Jezebel]

From this weekend’s Good Weekend in The Age, in an article by Tom Ballard entitled “Too Cool for School”:

“If Footyheads are the oafish kings of high school, Popular Girls are assuredly the vapid queens. Deemed ‘The Plastics’ in the 2004 film Mean Girls, this clique is made up of attractive females who are attractive and wear make-up and are attractive and giggle and are attractive and fully hot.

“The members of this group are often the first among their peers to produce any inkling of breast and to discover foundation. Their classroom catch cry—“So, like… what are we doing?”—is well known and feared.

Examples of the Popular Girl in Popular Culture include, as Ballard mentioned, the Plastics in Mean Girls; Cher Horowitz of Clueless, who sees the light in the end; Louise from ’80s cheese fest Teen Witch, who gains popularity from a supernatural amulet; and “good” witch Galinda from Wicked, who tries to make over the self-conscious and “green” Elphaba during the musical’s “Popular” tune, from which the title of this post was derived.

You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family. Luckily, my housemate is both a friend and relative and, while it’s still early days, thank God our relationship is a tad more functional than those expressed in this flow chart.

Frequent trips to the video store when I was younger means I’m privy to some of the best so-bad-they’re-good flicks of the late ’80s and early ’90s that not many others my age were. Teen Witch, Girls Just Want to Have Fun and Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead spring to mind, the latter of which has a “surprisingly serious” message behind it.

The Sunday Times Magazine ran with a story on “Lady Gaga & the Death of Sex”. Unfortunately, you have to pay to read the whole thing, but here’s a snippet. Hopefully an Australian mag picks up the story…

God help us! I didn’t think you could get any worse than Sarah Palin when it comes to female Republicans, but apparently you can. Jezebel runs a piece on “the new Republican candidate for Senate in Delaware”, Christine O’Donnell. A bit of background: “She is a devout Catholic, chaste, anti-masturbation, pro-abstinence-only sex ed, anti-condoms and anti-porn.” But what I find most conflicting about her stance is that “There’s only truth and not truth… You’re either very good or evil.” We’re all going to hell, then!

Tavi Gevinson gives her take on “Kinderwhore Britney” on the cover of Japanese magazine Pop: “These covers shock us because, even though this is how we’ve been used to seeing Britney Spears throughout her entire career, she’s finally the one to comment on our culture’s disturbing obsession with her.”

In a similar vein, Julian Abagond at Sociological Images wants to know “Why Do the Japanese Draw Themselves as White?” Well, “as it turns out, that is an American opinion, not a Japanese one. The Japanese see anime characters as being Japanese. It is Americans who think they are white. Why? Because to them white is the Default Human Being.”

A pro-hunting friend of mine put me on to this article featured in The Age, entitled “Men Who Kill”. The provocative title certainly reflects what a lot of animal-loving, vegetarian Greenies think about hunters (I, myself, have conflicting feelings about being a meat-eating, leather-wearing, zoo-goer versus being staunchly against animal cruelty, puppy mills/pet shops, fur, whaling etc.), but one quote from the article is particularly thought-provoking: “It’s [the rabbit] out and about and ‘bang’, the next thing it knows is nothing. It’s not tormented by a slaughter yard or fed hormones.”

To celebrate season two of Jersey Shore,The Atlantic thinks that “We Are All Snooki”, the undisputed breakout star of the show, in terms of “crafting public selves”. Only Snooki’s public self is a whole lot more outrageous and famous than most of ours.

Bret Easton Ellis does The Babysitters Club? WTF? But he does it oh so well. For example, Kristy says, “Like, sorry that you have diabetes Stacey, but do we have to spend half the afternoon discussing it? And yeah, it really bums me out to watch Claudia snort up half those Pixie Stix when she is so blatantly trying to get attention to her sugar problem…” Speaking of Claudia, her chapter is far better; very passive aggressive, in the vein of BEE:

“We were going 30 in a 25 mph Stoneybrook crossing lane, my dad’s hands clenched white against the wheel while I could practically hear him grinding his teeth all the way in the backseat. I was sitting next to my older sister Janine, who had spent the last three days on some sort of cleanse diet because she was, in her words, ‘packing on the pounds like I was the one eating all the junk food.’ Or because someone had switched out her carefully hidden birth control pills with orange Tic Tacs last month. Either one.”

Sometimes it seems my sister and I are the only ones on the face of the earth who have seen/remember/love the ’80s teen movie, Teen Witch. Until Jezebel profiled it! Above, a choice rap clip from the film!